House with Balcony access - Mittelbreite 1 and Classical Weimar

Scenic road chapters

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. House with Balcony access - Mittelbreite 1

   In the 1920s, the German architect Walter Gropius was asked to design housing for working families, and he approached it as an experiment in how to build well and cheaply. The Bauhaus school had moved to Dessau in 1925, and Gropius used the opportunity to build a whole estate at Torten, on the southern edge of town, with rows of simple concrete houses designed for mass production. A few years later, in 1930, he built a block of balcony-access houses nearby, in which flats were reached by open walkways on the outside rather than by internal stairs, a design that saved space and money.

   Read the complete House with Balcony access - Mittelbreite 1 write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   House with Balcony access - Mittelbreite 1 is where the day begins. Next is Luther's birthplace.

2. 2. Luther's birthplace

   Martin Luther was born in Eisleben on 10 November 1483, and by an odd twist of fate he died here too, in 1546, while on a visit to settle a dispute between the counts of Mansfeld. The house where he was born was rebuilt after a fire in the seventeenth century and became one of the first museums in Germany dedicated to a single person. Together with the house where he died and the sites in Wittenberg where he lived and taught, it forms the UNESCO site of the Luther Memorials in Eisleben and Wittenberg, listed in 1996. The museum tells the story of Luther's family, his childhood and the beginning of the Reformation, and it has been extended with modern exhibitions.

   Read the complete Luther's birthplace write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Luther's birthplace comes up about 82 km into the recorded legs. Next is Classical Weimar.

3. 3. Classical Weimar

   Weimar is small, about 65,000 people, and for a few decades around 1800 it was the cultural capital of the German-speaking world. Goethe moved here in 1775 at the invitation of the young Duke Carl August, and stayed for most of his life. Schiller came later, Herder and Wieland were already in town, and together they made the little court a place where poetry, philosophy and theatre were taken very seriously. The Goethe house on the Frauenplan and Schiller's house nearby are open to visitors, and the Park an der Ilm, a landscaped garden along the river, has Goethe's garden house. The UNESCO listing covers these and other buildings of the era.

   Read the complete Classical Weimar write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 177 km into the recorded legs you reach Classical Weimar. Next is back through Luther's birthplace.

4. 4. back through Luther's birthplace

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Luther's birthplace write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   back through Luther's birthplace, late in the day. Next is House with Balcony access - Mittelbreite 1.

5. 5. House with Balcony access - Mittelbreite 1

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete House with Balcony access - Mittelbreite 1 write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Back at House with Balcony access - Mittelbreite 1. That is the ride.